In early 2009, one of our British correspondents, Simon Powell, reviewed a fascinating-sounding miniseries called Dead Set. Written by satirist Charlie Brooker, Dead Set mixed a zombie apocalypse with the reality television series Big Brother. Simon gave it a positive review, and I despaired that the show, which made its debut on the UK-based channel E4, would never see make it across the pond to the USA. Well, those worries are now dispelled -- Dead Set is making its American debut on IFC. Starting on October 25th, each of the five parts will air at 12:00AM midnight (Eastern time), with the entire series being shown in a marathon on Halloween night at 8PM Eastern. (read more...)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. As is apparent
in the structuring of its title, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is
more concerned with building a franchise out of its titular villain
than it is crafting a continuous chapter in Chainsaw
lore, and the resulting film struggles to find balance between being
both a remake and a sequel to Tobe Hooper's original.
Admirers of the first film will have no trouble spotting the twists
and turns of David Schow's script, which treats Hooper's original
screenplay like a road map, stopping at all the familiar spots along
the way to a dissatisfying conclusion. To his credit, director Jeff
Burr tries to inject his been-there-killed-that film with copious
gore expected of a movie with Texas
Chainsaw Massacre in
its title (ironic since the original film had little red stuff to
show), but New
Line Cinema's vigorous
cuts prevent the film even from being enjoyed on a primitive level.
What's left is a gutted, castrated version of the original Texas
Chain Saw Massacre.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. Greetings and
welcome to another installment of Classic-Horror.com's Shiverin' 6.
In sticking with our month-long celebration of The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre series, we've decided to
take a look at six members of the cannibalistic Sawyer clan.
Demented, depraved and downright bizarre these characters inspired
over the top performances from the actors cast to play them, and also
provided the audience with many chill inducing moments thanks to
their psychotic behavior. Now, in order of their appearance in the
series, let's meet the family.

Roy Ward Baker, who directed several British horror films in the late 1960s and early 1970s, passed away in his sleep on Tuesday, according to Guardian.co.uk. He was 93 years old. Born in 1916, Baker worked his way up the the ranks of the British film industry in the 1930s and 40s, moving from minor jobs to assistant director (he worked with Hitchcock on The Lady Vanishes). In 1947, he made his directorial debut with The October Man, which he madefor Two Cities Films in 1947. He directed a number of notable pictures in the 1950s, including Don't Bother to Knock (starring Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe) and A Night to Remember (which documented the sinking of the RMS Titanic). As part of his extensive television work in the early 1960s, Baker helmed the episode of The Avengers which introduced Diana Rigg's Emma Peel to the world. (read more...)

"DEATH LIVES," states the trailer
for Tales from the Crypt (1972), and with its pervasive images
of skulls and corpses, one is inclined to agree. Revisiting this film
I am struck by how morbid and vicious it really is. It deals not just
with the fear of life's end, but with the fear of what comes after
life's end. From their earliest days horror films and stories have
dealt with death. The imagery of decay is repulsive, and the finality
of loss (Grandma isn't coming back, ever) is terrifying. We all
must die. How are we to accept this? The management of this terror
has been one of mankind's greatest tasks, and frequently it has
fallen to one of mankind's oldest institutions: religion.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. Back
in 1974, Tobe Hooper changed the horror game when he made the
original Texas
Chain Saw Massacre
as an independent auteur. However, like many of the horror
wunderkinds who made their mark in the 1970s, Hooper eventually
found himself working for The Man. In the mid-1980s, Hooper was under
contract to mini-major The Cannon Group, for whom he had already made
two box office disasters that saw more than their fair share of
post-production meddling. Making a sequel that lived up to the
daunting legacy of The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre
would be difficult in any circumstance, but with Hooper now beholden
to short-sighted corporate overlords, the task became impossible.
Hooper tried, though. In The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,
he tackled (or attempted to tackle) such diverse topics as the
socioeconomic
landscape of 1980s America, the absurdity of family values, and the
destructive effects of vengeance, all while trying to make a movie
that Cannon would deem commercially viable. With so many different
goals, it isn't surprising that The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is
uneven, a mish-mash of interesting ideas and missed opportunities,
great moments and bizarre tonal shifts.

It began, legend says, at Christmas time. Tobe Hooper, a film director whose only feature credit had been a hippie drama called Eggshells, was standing in a Montgomery Ward, trapped by the bustle of last-minute shoppers. As he contemplated how to get through the mass of consumerism, he found violent inspiration in a display of chainsaws. Thankfully, he didn't act on his carnage-filled fantasy of bloody crowd control. Instead, he channeled the idea into his second feature, a low-budget horror flick about a quintet of young people who are beset by a family of cannibal hicks in the sweltering Texas summer. Although produced with working titles such as Headcheese and Leatherface, it was released in 1974 with the only name it would ever need: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This brutal cacophony of terror would go on to spawn three direct sequels, documentaries, a video game, several comic books, an official fan club, and countless pieces of collectible merchandise. Its imitators are innumerable. In 2003, New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes released a remake which spawned its own prequel, merchandise, and comic books.

Love
conquers all is a theme at least as old as Shakespeare, but in the
last fifty years, it has rarely been explored in the context of horror
films. Let
the Right One In's
singular accomplishment is that it captivates us with a fresh take on
this venerable theme while simultaneously upending horror genre
conventions at every turn. The memorable end result resonates long
after the final credits.
(read more...)

Spooky children
have always been favorite stock characters of the horror genre.
Starting as early as The Village of the Damned, blossoming in
The Exorcist and The Omen, and bringing us to times as
recent as the ones that witnessed Orphan, evil-natured
children have always sparked our imagination and our worse parental
fears. Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw presents
this now cliché story trope in a setting that may or may not be
inhabited by the damned, creating an atmosphere of dread and terror.
Although at times a bit of a tough read, The Turn of the Screw
remains an icon of psychological horror in literature.
(read more...)

Sometimes when I'm coming up with my fanvids, I think of the movie or television series I want to work with, and then come up with a song. Sometimes I like of a song and try to find a fandom to vid it to. However, with my latest creation, the song and source came at the same time in a burst of inspiration: The B-52's "Love Shack" paired with The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. In hindsight, it's an obvious pairing. However, the actual editing process was less obvious. From start to finish, this video was a year and a half in the making. I hope you enjoy it.